


Don't make me say it twice, Mulder

by Frangipanidownunder



Category: The X Files Revival, The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-05
Updated: 2016-12-07
Packaged: 2018-09-06 18:22:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8764006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frangipanidownunder/pseuds/Frangipanidownunder
Summary: For @leiascully's XFWritingChallenge: StarsA nice little trip to the forest





	1. Chapter 1

They’d been walking for miles. Scully couldn’t feel her toes, she couldn’t feel her nose, she couldn’t feel her fingers. What she could feel were the ice crystals in her hair, the damp cold of her shirt under her jacket and the jagged bubble of irritation that, any minute now, would burst to issue a ‘what the fuck are we doing here, Mulder’ speech that she’d been rehearsing for the last 45 minutes.  
He stopped, checking his surroundings. He looked up, sniffed the air and had the gall to smile at her. One of his goofy, cutesie, oh-so-fucking-sexy smiles. My God, he knew when to pull out all the stops. It was like babies. They learn to smile at the six-week mark so that parents don’t kill them when the sleep deprivation fades from novelty to chore. She watched his lips. She was always watching his lips. But this time she watched them as they split into the smile, then, when he caught her watching, pursed into a little kissy pout. Clearly, her expression wasn’t as frozen as she imagined. Either that, or it had frozen into her best ‘Scully’s not impressed’ face.  
He plunged his hands into his coat pocket and shrugged. “Come on, Scully. It’s fun. Admit it.”  
She puffed out a breath that clouded in front of her. “What’s fun about traipsing through a forest in the near dark and in almost freezing temperatures, Mulder? Remind me.”  
He walked towards her, pushing his head out on his neck and waggling his eyebrows. “I can remind you about what we used to do in the forest on dark nights, if you want me to, Agent Scully.”  
She crossed her arms over her chest, daring him with a quirked eyebrow. He was towering over her now, and truth be told, it made her feel slightly giddy, as though his mere shadow enveloped her and warmed her from the inside out. She knew he often used his height advantage to intimidate suspects, but to her, it signalled strength, trust, protection and love. He had to bend to talk to her, to whisper, to kiss.  
“We’ve hunted all manner of strange and arcane mysteries.” His breath was hot on the side of her face. “Aliens, mothmen, vampires. Our life has been nothing if not an exciting quest in search of life on the fringes.”  
She snorted. “Mulder, we got wet, we got injured, we got scared. We found more frightening examples of ‘life on the fringes’ in the Hoover building.” She stretched up, pecked his cheek and pushed past him. “Now, will you admit you’re lost and that this has been an exercise in demonstrating just how old and unfit we are these days?”  
He caught up with her in a couple of strides, pulling her in to his side. “We are not lost. And we might be the wrong side of fifty, but I can honestly say,” his eyes grazed down the front of her body, “you’ve never looked so fit.”  
He winked and she couldn’t help but smile. 

The clearing was ahead. She could see it. It was the strangest thing. The brightness of it, in the deepest, darkest part of the forest. No wonder he was excited. This was Mulder at his best. At these times, all his optimism, hope and wonder at the world, no matter how cruel it could be, merged to make him childlike and innocent. Her jaded view of their situation lifted as she watched him there, surrounded by light, happy.  
“Come here, Scully. It’s warmer.”  
She shook her head. “I don’t want to tread on your toes. This is your moment, Mulder.”  
“But I don’t want to be in the spotlight by myself.” An aura lit the top of his head, stray hairs electrified, taking years off his face. He looked just like that idiot yelling in the rain from all those years before. He held out his hand to her, an offer of peace, trust and love.  
She walked forward, reaching out and twining her fingers through his. She stepped into the beam of light, not sure if it really was warmer, or if it was like a placebo to their frozen bodies. He squeezed her tighter to him.  
“Astral experiences are meant to be shared,” he whispered into her ear.  
“This isn’t an astral experience, Mulder. This is some kind of gaseous combustion.”  
She knew he would look wounded. This was part of their dance.  
He pouted again. “You have no imagination, Scully.”  
“And you have no concept of reality, Mulder.”  
“Reality is overrated. You should know that by now.” He kissed her hair and nuzzled into her neck.  
She squirmed against him, muffling a sigh into his chest. “Nevertheless, the reality of our situation now is that I’m freezing, hungry and tired, and no amount of imagination is going to remedy that.”  
He nodded. “I’m sorry. I just wanted you to see this. And you have to admit that it’s pretty spectacular.” He held out their joined hands and the light sparkled over them. They looked like holograms, like spirits, like they melded into one another on some ethereal level.  
“I’ll concede that this is better than mothmen and vampires.”  
He pulled their hands in again and kissed her long and deep.  
“You know what would be even better?”  
“Better than astral experiences?”  
“Way better, Scully. Look up.” He tilted her head to the sky, dotted with silvery stars. “Marry me. Then when we come here next year our rings would catch the light. Imagine that fireworks display.”  
She took a moment to study the night sky before lowering her gaze and bringing their bunched hands up to her mouth. She pressed a kiss on each of his knuckles.  
“What do you say, Scully?” His voice rasped against her cheek.  
“I say that this is so you, Mulder. Proposing in a forest clearing that is lit up by some kind of chemical anomaly.”  
“And this is so you, Scully. Analysing and rationalizing instead of just accepting.”  
“Are you asking me to be spontaneous, Mulder?”  
He chuffed out a laugh. “Is it so hard? Just once. For me.”  
She chewed her lip. “You know there have been many romantic lines written about stars and starlight. And all I get is a ‘marry me’.”  
Smiling, he quoted, “When he shall die, Take him and cut him out in little stars, And he will make the face of heaven so fine, That all the world will be in love with night, And pay no worship to the garish sun. Romeo and Juliet. Better?”  
She shrugged. “Not bad. Yours is the light by which my spirit’s born: - you are my sun, my moon, and all my stars.”  
“Ah,” he said. “E E Cummings. Beautiful.” He kissed her again. “But I’m still waiting for an answer.”  
She held his gaze. “I like the night. Without the dark, we’d never see the stars.”  
He frowned a little. “That’s familiar…I can’t place it. A movie, maybe. I can imagine Grace Kelly sitting on a verandah, saying something like that.”  
She chuckled. “Bella Swan, Twilight.”  
He groaned. “Sculleeee. There’s nowhere to go after Twilight.”  
She studied his face, all shadows and angles in the strange light. “Have I got you backed into a pop culture corner, Agent Mulder?”  
“I didn’t know you were into YA novels, Agent Scully.”  
“It’s amazing what people don’t know about their partners, romantic or otherwise, Agent Mulder.” She play-punched his shoulder. “And it’s time we headed back.”  
“You’re stalling. You owe me an answer.”  
“You owe me a foot massage. I’ve lost all feeling in my toes.”  
“When we’re back at the motel, I’ll give you feeling back in your toes, your ankles, your knees, your thighs, your…”  
She held up a hand. “I get the picture, Mulder. Let’s get out of here.”  
He sighed and took her hand, squeezing her fingers as they trudged away. 

The car was a haven of dry warmth. They remained silent for a fair distance.  
“So, you’re telling me that I could have wooed you back sooner with some Stephanie Meyer? How did I miss that?”  
“You think that because I’m a scientist I don’t enjoy a little romance every now and then, Mulder?”  
“I just proposed to you in an astral shaft. You can’t get much more romantic than that, Scully.”  
“That is true, but it’s a big decision. You can’t expect me to give you an answer right away, just because you chose an impossibly beautiful spot in which to ask me. But I do appreciate the sentiment.” She squeezed his knee.  
“If I had asked you in a scientific way, would you have given me an answer straightaway?”  
“And just what constitutes a scientific proposal, Mulder?”  
He smirked at her. “I could have got down on one knee in the autopsy bay, with the sound of a Stryker saw for some background music.”  
She giggled.  
“Or maybe we could have shared a stethoscope and listened to the sounds of our beating hearts together.”  
She pushed out her bottom lip. “Not bad, Mulder. Not bad.”  
“Or maybe I should just quote some scientific jargon to reel you in.”  
“Such as?”  
“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood…”  
“We are made of starstuff. Carl Sagan. Nice segue, Mulder.”

They pulled up outside the motel, its flickering neon sign shedding an orange glow over the dash in the car.  
“Have you had enough time to think now?”  
She unclipped her seatbelt, leant over to him and kissed his mouth. “Yes.”  
He kissed her back. “And?”  
“Don’t make me say it twice, Mulder.”


	2. Don't make me say it twice, Mulder: Round Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A fluffy, slightly smutty follow up to the first fic, Don't make me say it twice, Mulder.  
> For @leiascully's XFWritingChallenge: Stars

She woke with Mulder’s left arm draped over her hip. Years before it would have been a sensual comfort, but these days it just gave her a cramp. He’d bulked up (pleasingly) with his regular boxing fitness routine. And while arm porn was one of her guilty pleasures, at 6.30am on a cold Tuesday in a random motel, his limb was about as far from sexy as his morning breath and his nose hairs tickling the back of her neck.   
She shifted out from under him and he grunted something about astral lights and Team Edward. She unkinked her neck and hips and made for the bathroom, determined to snag the hot water. She did linger at the door, admiring the curve of his biceps. Or were they her biceps? Now that they were engaged. She let the water run over her hair and face and wondered how life would be from now on.

He was insufferable, this version of Mulder. The long drive back to Washington was filled with incessant chatter about their new life together. At one of the many fuel stops, she waited for the tank to fill, as he droned on.   
She snapped. “Mulder! Nothing will change. It’s just a piece of paper and a couple of rings.”   
He opened his mouth to reply, but thought better of it, sinking wordlessly back into the car leaving her to go in and pay.   
“Didn’t you get us anything to drink?” Now his voice was on the point of whiny.   
“I didn’t, no. Why don’t you go and get something? I’m not a mind-reader, Mulder.”  
“But, now that…”  
She glared at him. “Don’t even, Mulder. Just. Don’t. Even.”

They were on the final stretch home. He wanted to say something to her. It was in the way he glanced at her when he thought she wasn’t looking - every five seconds. It was the way he shifted in the seat, loosening his tie, his belt, unbuttoning his collar. It was the way he leant over to change channels on the radio, to grab his drink, deliberately brushing her thigh. It was in each heavy sigh, each crick of his neck, each rub of his chin.  
“Mulder, just say it, will you?”  
“Say what, Scully?”  
She chewed on her bottom lip and breathed out heavily through her nose. “Whatever it is that’s turned you from world’s most romantic, to world’s most annoying in the space of 12 hours.”  
He turned to look at her, his mouth hanging open. “Are you breaking up with me already, Scully?”   
She couldn’t help but smile. Maybe she was being a little snippy. “I’m prepared to give you another go, if you just tell me what’s on your mind. Please.”  
He clenched his fingers around the steering wheel and cleared his throat. “Where are we going to live? I mean, your apartment is nice and all, but it’s…well, it’s small and neat and a bit…a bit…”  
“A bit what, Mulder?”  
He chanced a look at her. “Sterile?”  
The road ahead stretched out, a snake of red tail lights. The sky was dull grey, heavy with unshed rain. “Sterile? You mean, clean, Mulder. Clean.”  
“But your clean is like in the 99th percentile of clean. It’s an A+, a High Distinction, a Royal Flush.”  
She straightened her skirt over her thighs. He watched. Carefully. She rolled her eyes. “Mulder, my apartment is orderly. It suits me, my lifestyle. I think it would suit us, too. Our lifestyle. And it’s closer to work, it’s cheaper to run. I think it would be fine.”  
“But the house.”  
“What about the house?”  
“It’s our home. We bought it together. There are memories.”  
She turned to him, admiring his profile briefly before launching her response. “There are memories, Mulder, that’s true. But they’re tainted. We were different people then, when we bought it. We were on the run, exiles. That house was a fuck-you to the people who chased us out of our normal lives. Nobody expected Fox Mulder and Dana Scully to end up on acreage in rural Virginia. We need…we have to move on from that.”  
“I guess so.” He sighed, taking another swig of his drink. “But don’t expect me to squeeze the toothpaste according to some mathematical formula you’ve developed. I won’t do it, Scully. I just won’t compromise on some things.”  
She couldn’t help herself. She let out a giggle that made her throat gurgle and her eyes water.

He promised to be good, if he could only just stay the night, try out their new life. His eyes widened, his lower lip pouted, his head moved closer to hers. She couldn’t say no. It was infuriating, the way he wheedled into her conscience, even at her age. She nearly smacked him when he added in a whisper, “we are engaged, after all.”   
“That had better not be the phrase that ends all our discussions, Mulder. I might just be prepared to serve time for manual strangulation if you’re going to continue to use it against me.”   
He offered her one of his goofy grins. “I’m prepared to use anything against you, Scully.”  
She pulled the belt of her silk robe tighter.  
“You wait until we get married, Scully. You’ll be laughing at my jokes before I deliver the punch line, you’ll be sitting too close to me on other people’s couches, you’ll be picking the fluff off my suits, you’ll be looking at my mouth all the time.”  
“Mulder, I’ve doing all those things for years.”   
He fell onto the bed and shucked off his shoes, unknotted his tie and hurled it across the room, unbuttoned his shirt and threw it overhead so it landed on the pillows behind him, and flopped down on his back ready to undo his fly.  
Quick as a flash, she straddled him, her oyster robe draping around her knees and fluttering on his chest. She held herself up on one hand and used the other to cover his hand over the zipper of his pants. “No. No way, Mulder.”  
He gave her his laziest, sexiest smile. “No-way-Mulder-what, Scully?” His voice rasped over his vocal chords, and she felt herself shudder.  
“Pick them up.”  
He grinned, his eyes kaleidoscopes of trouble. Without warning, he flipped her over so that she lay helpless under him, his trousers flapping open to reveal the elastic of his boxers, and his strong hands wrapped around her wrists.   
“Say please, Scully.”  
She looked to the left, to the right and set her mouth into a thin line. He bent forward and nipped the skin of her neck. Instantly her nipples hardened and she cursed her body’s biological reaction. He took advantage of her vulnerability and nipped again, deepening his kiss until he was working the skin on her neck with his teeth and his lips.  
She jerked away. “Mulder, you’re leaving a mark.”  
“It’s just a hickey, Scully. We are engaged, after all.” He increased the pace of his action. “Besides, you still haven’t said please, yet.”  
“We are not teenagers,” she said, sighing as he buried his face into her collarbone and suckled the particularly sensitive patch between her neck and her shoulder. Before she protest anymore, he kissed his way down, pushing her robe out of the way of his navigation, laving the skin of her chest until he reached a breast, where he took her nipple in his mouth and teased, teased and oh…  
“Mulder,” she warned.  
“Will you change your name, Scully? Dana Mulder? Dr D Mulder, there’s a certain cadence to it that makes me…hard.”   
He let his tongue drift around her areola before heading further south and nipping and sucking his way down her ribcage and belly.  
“I’m Dana Scully. Dr…Dana…ugh…Scully. Mulder, please.”  
He let go of her wrists and she grabbed two handfuls of hair, urging him down. He chuckled, the vibrations of his chin sending jolts of pleasure through her insides. “What was that you said, Dr Scully?”  
She panted as his tongue cleaved her open and he scooted down the bed to free his hands and fingers so they could do their best work.   
“Mulder.”  
He lifted his head briefly to watch her and she could see in his green-gold eyes what he saw: her face wild with desire, flushed, her hair mussed, her robe disheveled, her breasts rising and falling.  
“Don’t make me say it twice, Mulder.”


	3. Don’t make me say it twice, Mulder: Final

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thanks once again to @leiascully and the XFWritingChallenge prompt Stars for giving me the inspiration for the first story, and to all the readers who’ve provided feedback and likes which inspired me to write the follow up and this finale. Enjoy!

There was something about Mulder that wasn’t right. Not just in the I’m-going-to-taste-the-evidence way, or in the I’m-going-to-jump-on-a-plane-to-Russia way. It was more in the if-we’re-getting-married-we-should-do-it-traditionally way. And that wasn’t right.  
“Mulder, since when have we been traditional?” Scully said, pacing the floor of her/their apartment wearing his ‘Hank Moody for President’ tee-shirt and picking up the clutter he’d distributed around the living room. “I mean, we spend our work time in a basement, surrounded by paperwork detailing unexplained phenomenon, we don’t have any free time in which to develop any sense of the normal, we’ve spent our lives keeping our feelings to ourselves despite the fact that both of us knew exactly how we felt from pretty early on, and we have no friends or family to celebrate with. Why start being traditional now?”  
He lifted his head from his copy of ‘New Moon’. “I can see why you like this stuff, Scully.”  
She huffed out a sigh, picked up the jar of peanut butter and took a large mouthful. “Have you been listening to anything I’ve said?”  
“If I say yes, you’ll drill me on every point you’ve made, if I say no, you’ll drill me to the wall.” He put the book down, raised his hands in surrender and grinned.  
“Even your cutest smile won’t get you out of this one, Mulder. If we’re getting married, we do it my way.”  
He sucked on his bottom lip, in that maddeningly sexy way, and said, “that’s hardly the most auspicious start to a marriage, Scully.”  
“So, what are you proposing? A Vegas wedding with Elvis as celebrant?”  
He tipped his head on a half-angle and went to open his mouth.  
“Or a Star Wars theme where you dress up as C3PO and you ask me to wear that skimpy gold costume that Princess Leia wore in the third story, and we walk down the aisle to the Imperial March.”  
He raised his eyebrows and sucked in a breath.  
“Or we drive for miles to the middle of nowhere and get married by some batcrap crazy farmer who claims his crop circles are the work of a blood-sucking goat returned from the dead.”  
He chuckled. “Now that’s just silly, Scully. But I quite like the sound of your second scenario.”  
She let out a strangled scream and flopped down on the seat next to him. “Can we be serious, for a moment, Mulder?”  
Turning to face her, he took her hands, his voice solemn. “Scully, I want you to be happy. I want you to have the wedding you most desire. It will be your day. It’s enough for me that you said yes.”  
“Thank you. That means a lot. And I don’t mean to sound brusque or facetious. It’s important to get it right.” She bent her head down so that it rested on his shoulder. He wriggled to get the angle just perfect, opened his book and began to read again.  
“Oh, and the third Star Wars story is Revenge of the Sith. The gold outfit that Leia wore was in The Return of the Jedi, which is the sixth story, but the third movie.” He pecked her cheek. “just in the interests of getting it right.”  
She’d been attacked by all manner of mutants, zombies, monsters, aliens and humans. She’d given evidence to courts and senate inquiries. She’d faced her own death, buried her partner and given away her child. Yet, as they set off on the drive to the small coastal town she’d picked for the service, she was as scared as she’d ever been.  
Her exhaustive to-do lists had been more than exhausted, her triple checking on bookings had done nothing but irritate the suppliers, her conversations with Mulder bordered on maniacal nagging. And he’d let her do it, let her have a tantrum or three, massaged her feet when she hadn’t even asked and had even let her pick out his suit for him – dark charcoal with a pale blue shirt underneath. He was packing it into a suit carrier when she was putting her make-up bag into their suitcase.  
“What’s this, Mulder?” she asked, picking out a hardback book. “Do you honestly think you’ll have time to read?”  
He quirked his eyebrows and chuckled. “Not if you’re offering something more physical. But that ones by that guy who plays Hank Moody. He’s a writer now, who knew?”  
She held up the book. “Bucking F*king Dent. Never heard of him.”

Today was the big day. Or small day. Their day. Their wedding day. It was almost a relief that it had arrived. She was pretty sure that Mulder would agree.  
A soft knock on the door told her he was ready. “Can I come in, or is that banned too?”  
“Mulder,” she sighed. “You only have to hold out for a few more hours.”  
He pushed open the door and stood at the end of their bed. “But you told me you didn’t want a traditional wedding, Scully. I’m sorry to have to inform you that you can’t regain your virginity simply by refraining from intercourse for a few days.”  
She grinned and batted him on the midriff with her curling iron. “You’re lucky this isn’t on yet, or I’d brand you.”  
“Ooh, then we’d have matching tattoos.” He moved behind her and rubbed her lower back. “I’m looking forward to saying hello to your snake again tonight, Scully.” He kissed the spot where her neck joined her shoulders and she sighed into him.  
“I’m looking forward to saying hello to yours too, now scoot. I’ve got to get dressed. The car will be here soon.”  
He dipped down again, brushing his lips around the back of her neck and planting soft kisses down her vertebrae. “My snake has missed you.”  
“Mulder.”  
“I’m scooting,” he said. “I’m scooting.”  
When she walked down the stairs from their room to the lobby of the hotel, she could see him tapping the bar with his fingers. She smiled to herself. Fox Mulder, who would readily jump in blindly to pursue the truth, who threw himself on top of trains and down holes, who rescued her from the ends of the earth with a second thought and who would rather have faced the death penalty than compromise his scruples, was as nervous as she was.  
He turned then, his face opening up to her, his eyes wide, his mouth opening slightly before breaking into a wide smile. He held out his hand to her. “You look…I have no words…you are so, so beautiful, Scully.”  
She blushed and cast her own eyes down her midnight blue gown, that fell to the floor in a narrow column. It shimmered in the light that cut through the bar from the ornate windows. Her silver sandals sparkled too, and she clutched his hand to her mouth to press a loving kiss there. “You look more handsome now than you have ever done, Mulder. Shall we go married?”  
Skinner had agreed to be witness and looked dapper in his navy suit.  
“I can’t believe the two of you took so darn long to do this,” he said, as he kissed her cheek. He clapped a hand across Mulder’s back. “Actually, scrap that. Of course I can. You two are the most unconventional, frustrating and impossible pair of agents I’ve ever known. And you never could do anything the easy way. Congratulations.”  
They were facing each other, holding hands. Scully raised her eyes to Mulder’s. “I do.”  
The celebrant had a velvet voice and a warm, confident smile as she took them through Mulder’s turn. He opened his mouth to speak, but he choked and tears tracked down his cheeks instead. Skinner brushed the end of his nose and inspected his feet. Scully squeezed his hands gently, trying desperately not cry herself.  
“Mr Mulder?” the celebrant prompted.  
Mulder shook his head and whispered. “I do. I do.”  
The evening sun cast a deep amber glow into their room. The curtains billowed on the light breeze and Mulder popped the champagne cork from the balcony, quickly filling the two flutes that stood on a silver tray on the small table. She stepped over the threshold and breathed in the salty tang of the air.  
“Today was perfect, Mulder.” She sipped her drink and bubbles made her nose wrinkle.  
“You are perfect, Scully.” He chinked his glass against hers and sat down on one of the chairs, regarding her with the deep gaze he’d developed over the years, the one she could never run from. “And I concede that your dress is even more amazing than Princess Leia’s gold number.”  
She snorted out a laugh. “Thank you. And thank you for letting me be such a control freak for the past few weeks. I know I’ve driven you crazy with my pedantry.”  
“There’s a small part of me that likes to be controlled, Scully. Did you know that?” He waggled his eyebrows.  
“Is this true confession time?” She slipped off her sandal and rubbed her toes along his shin. “Because if it is, there’s something I’d like to get off my chest.”  
He leant forward, placing the glass back on the tray. “I’m all ears.”  
“I have a wild and rebellious side,” she said, her voice deepening with lust. “It’s a Catholic upbringing thing, I think.” She licked her lips. “And I’m finding it really hard to control at the moment. It might be the alcohol…”  
He grabbed her wrist and nipped the skin up to her elbow. She shifted forward and pulled his head to her breast. “How are we going to work this out, this paradox in our relationship, Mulder? You needing control, me letting go.”  
He lifted his head and kissed the side of her mouth, “What would you prescribe, Doctor?”  
“Therapy,” she said, her voice sliding out like silk.  
“What sort of therapy?” He stood up, picking her up and carrying her to the bed.  
“Skin to skin, tongue to tongue, breast to breast…”  
“I’m not familiar with these techniques. Care to show me?”  
She nipped, kissed, suckled, stroked, rubbed and caressed every inch of him, leaving him flushed and breathless. He shuddered under her touch and smiled as they rolled over together, so that he lay nestled between her legs. She lay her head down on the pillow so that her hair fanned out and she glanced to the mirror standing to the left of the bed, wondering languidly about how they looked together.  
“Mulder,” she said, sitting half up.  
“Did you see my wedding present?” he asked, eyes turned towards the mirror.  
“Your wedding present?”  
He lifted himself off her and turned his back to the mirror so that she could see the tattoo that sat just above his buttocks. “It was meant to be a surprise.”  
“It is. Turn over.” He did and she sat across his legs, inspecting it. “It’s beautiful.”  
“It’s Perseus and Andromeda, stars destined to remain together forever.”  
She kissed each star. “I love you, Mulder.”  
“What was that?” She kissed up his spine and around his neck, until he turned back over and she was astride him. “I didn’t quite hear you, Scully.”  
She giggled into his skin on his chest, breathing in the smell of him. “I love you, Mulder.”  
He pouted.  
“What?”  
“You said it twice.”  
She chuffed out a laugh. “Is there anything you wouldn’t want me to say twice, Mulder?  
“No, I like doubles,” he said, rubbing her nipples.  
She lay listening to his heart in her ears. Tears welled at the corners of her eyes and she wriggled her nose to try to quell the emotion. He shifted.  
“What’s the matter, Scully?” It was the soft voice he used when he read her thoughts.  
“I was thinking about all the people we’ve said a final goodbye to over the years.”  
“Too many,” he said, pulling her in tighter.  
“Including you,” she said, pulling his chin towards her and covering his mouth with hers. “Don’t make me say it twice, Mulder.”


End file.
